Resistance (Social)

Review - John Holloway, Crack Capitalism (London, 2010)

by Uday Chandra

Review - George Kunnath, Rebels from the Mud Houses: Dalits and the Making of the Maoist Revolution in Bihar (New Delhi, 2012)

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming in Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (4), 2012

Review - James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed (New Haven, 2009)

by Uday Chandra

Religion and Society: Advances in Research, Vol. 2 (2011), pp. 194-96.

Contingent borders, ambiguous ethics: Migrants in (international) political theory

by james brassett

The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative... more The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative arguments provided by liberal-cosmopolitan and liberal-communitarian authors are contrasted. While sympathetic to such approaches, we argue that traditional liberal theory has attempted to downplay the contingency and resultant ambiguity of many of its moral precepts. Historically contingent borders underpin neat universal categories like ‘‘citizen’’ and ‘‘refugee,’’ which fail to reflect the diverse and contested experiences of migration. But such ambiguities need not undermine liberal approaches. Indeed, a proper engagement with the problematic and uncertain realities of migration can provide a spur to a more thoroughgoing ethical praxis. We draw on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty to outline an approach to migration that remains open to the contingent construction of terms like ‘‘migrant,’’ ‘‘refugee,’’ and ‘‘asylum-seeker.’’ By extending Rorty’s concept of sentimental education, we provide an imaginative and politically
challenging set of agendas for the ethics of migration.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Pueblo Resistance and Accommodation during the Spanish Reconquista of New Mexico. In Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas, edited by M. Liebmann and M. S. Murphy. SAR Press, Santa Fe. 2011.

by Matthew Liebmann

Signs of Power and Resistance: The (Re)Creation of Christian Imagery and Identities in the Pueblo Revolt Era. In Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt, edited by Robert W. Preucel. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

by Matthew Liebmann

Published 2002.

Rethinking the Archaeology of Rebels, Backsliders, and Idolaters. In Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas, edited by M. Liebmann and M. S. Murphy. SAR Press, Santa Fe.

by Matthew Liebmann

Co-authored with Melissa S. Murphy. Introduction to the volume "Enduring Conquests"

Mounting Without Language: The Political Resistance To Signifier In Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language

by Arka Chattopadhyay

It's a paper I presented in my Post-grads days in JU on Harold Pinter's last play Mountain Language. It was meant to... more It's a paper I presented in my Post-grads days in JU on Harold Pinter's last play Mountain Language. It was meant to be a tribute to the playwright who had died that year only.

I upload it as a work in progress piece without a bibliography!

The paper seeks to analyze the political function of silence in Mountain Language not only in terms of the issue of the Kurdish language which is the political context for the composition of the play but also in terms of Pinter's complex response to and critique of realism. I refer to certain performances of the play too in order to further my point. Drawing on Beckett's insight into the torture mechanism, I try to bring out the autonomous outside to the process of torture that is constructed through a silence of resistance. It is also about resisting an imposed notion of liberty and Pinter's fascinating use of words that qualify and inform what I call his political resistance to the signifier. There are passing references to other Pinter plays, especially belonging to his last and overtly political period.

Learning the Hard Way

by STAMATIA KREMMYDA

published in 'Insight, Edinburgh University Economics Magazine', page 30

Symbol, Thought, Action: A Semiotic Approach to the Deterritorialization of Uyghur Resistance

by Michael Caster

Sailing Beyond Apartheid: The Social and Political Impact of Seafaring on Coloured South African Sailors

by Henry Trotter

in Carina Ray & Jeremy Rich (Eds.), Navigating African Maritime History (St John's, Newfoundland: Int'l Maritime Economic History Association, 2010), pp. 189-213

Historians of maritime culture show that, during the Revolutionary Era, the ship was an important site for the... more Historians of maritime culture show that, during the Revolutionary Era, the ship was an important site for the development and dissemination of anti-authoritarian ideals, that seamen were important carriers of revolutionary political consciousness to distant ports, and that the Atlantic basin was radicalized by this maritime traffic. They further suggest that seafarers embraced rebellious strategies because, on land, their rights were often restricted, their property expropriated and their labour exploited while, at sea, many were press-ganged or shanghaied into service, others were bonded into debt-service agreements and all were subject to the capricious rule of an elitist officer class. But these “motley crews” found new opportunities to connect as fellow subalterns, both on ships and on docks, producing a radical maritime tradition.

The question this article poses is: to what extent was this bound to the revolutionary era? Did the cauldron of maritime labour continue to imbue seafarers with a radical political sensibility beyond the age of sail?

To answer this question, I focus on the fortunes of “mixed race” coloured South African seamen who sailed on South African ships during apartheid (1948-1994). I chose this group of Cape Town men because they share structural similarities with their Atlantic ancestors: they were politically oppressed, their land was expropriated by the government and they were physically exploited. By assessing their experiences at home, at sea and abroad, we can better understand how modern seafaring has affected their political consciousness.

Fat Women: the Role of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Revisited

by Maya Maor

Maor, M. (2012). Fat Women: The Role of Mother-Daughter Relationships Revisited. Women's Studies International Forum. 35 (2): 97–108.

BUILDING OVER PLANNING: RADICAL COUNTER-HEGEMONY AND THE DINOSAURS OF THE OLD LEFT

by E. Colin Ruggero

Configurable Culture: Mainstreaming the Remix, Remixing the Mainstream

by Aram Sinnreich

My 2007 doctoral dissertation from USC Annenberg.

This dissertation examines the emergence of new musical aesthetics and practices based around networked media... more This dissertation examines the emergence of new musical aesthetics and practices based around networked media technologies, from remix music to file sharing, and argues that these “configurable” technologies and practices compel us to
reexamine our assumptions about both cultural production and social organization. The research is multi-theoretical and multi-methodological, bringing together elements of cultural studies, social network analysis, personality psychology, art history, and musicology, and drawing data primarily from personal interviews with musicians, music industry executives, and attorneys, as well as self-reported attitudes about emerging cultural practices from a survey of 1,765 American adults.

I begin by reviewing the social history of musical regulation, and the resistance that this regulation has engendered. I also propose a mechanism by which musical aesthetics influence social organization, helping to explain the universality  of musical regulation and resistance across a broad range of social milieus. I argue that the dialectical tension between these opposing ethics has operated as a vital engine of aesthetic innovation. However, I argue, this process is bounded by a discursive framework that overdetermines our understanding of music’s role in society, and that both sustains and is sustained by dominant social institutions.

Next, I demonstrate that configurable technologies and practices undermine the discursive boundaries that have been in place for the past two centuries, which I term the “modern ontological framework.” I draw upon interview and survey data to explore the ways in which musicians, lawmakers, and everyday people are developing new ways to understand music and cultural production, as the definitional binaries underpinning the modern framework continue to erode into shades of gray.

Finally, I analyze these data in an effort to determine whether a new discourse based on configurability may be replacing the modern framework, and what such a discourse might entail in terms of social organization. I describe five principles: Configurable Collectivism, The Reunion of Labor, The Collision of Public and Private, The Shift from Linearity to Recursiveness, and The Emergence of DJ Consciousness. Their net effect, I argue, suggests a roadmap for the emergence of new social forms and institutions in the networked age.

Escaping Statebuilding: Resistance and Civil Society in the Democratic Republic of Congo

by marta iniguez

Published in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Vol. 6:1, 2012. Pp. 75 - 89

That statebuilding entails violence and dispossession, even in its contemporary form, is illustrated by the case of... more That statebuilding entails violence and dispossession, even in its contemporary form, is illustrated by the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The question this begs is not whether resistance exists but rather where and how it operates. Following James Scott, the article shows that resistance takes place as a quotidian strategy of mitigation, avoidance and escapism for which civil society acts as a platform. Highlighting civil society's ambiguity and heterogeneity, the article conceives of it as a site of resistance and analyses three strategies that are channelled through it: the deployment of counter-discourses, the use of violence and the production of the social fabric.

Questioning Chatterjee’s concept of ‘political society’:protopolitics or transitional sphere?

by Aylin Akyar

The end of forgetting: Strategic agency beyond the Panopticon

by Aram Sinnreich

Accepted for publication in "New Media & Society." Coauthored with Jonah Bossewitch.

The rapid explosion of information technologies in recent years has contributed to a substantive change in the social... more The rapid explosion of information technologies in recent years has contributed to a substantive change in the social dimensions of information sharing, and is forcing us to revise substantially our old assumptions regarding the knowledge/power dynamic. In this article, we discuss a range of strategic information-management options available to individuals and institutions in the networked society, and contrast these ‘blueprints’ to Foucault’s well-known Panopticon model. We organize these observations and analyses within a new conceptual framework based on the geometry of ‘information flux,’ or the premise that the net flow of information between an individual and a network is as relevant to power dynamics as the nature or volume of that information. Based on this geometrical model, we aim to develop a lexicon for the design, description, and critique of socio-technical systems.

Patterns of Resistance: Violence, Migration, and Trade in the Gallina Heartland

by Lewis Borck

La guerra non più nobile. Trasformazioni del lutto e destrutturazione del mito della bella morte nell’Italia postfascista, in L. Klinkhammer e O. Janz (a cura di), La morte per la patria. La celebrazione dei caduti dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica, Donzelli, Roma 2008, pp. 213-240.

by Guri Schwarz

Performing the Sub-Prime Crisis: Trauma and the Financial Event

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of ‘‘hearing’’ such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as ‘‘an event’’ with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently.